


once every four years

by silverhedges



Category: Rune Factory (Video Games), Rune Factory 1: A Fantasy Harvest Moon
Genre: Gen, i expect 2 people only to read this, this is the rarest fandom on earth
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-29
Updated: 2016-02-29
Packaged: 2018-05-24 00:35:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,456
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6135396
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/silverhedges/pseuds/silverhedges
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Felicity finds some mercy at her doorstep. Ivan turns thirty.</p>
            </blockquote>





	once every four years

They have a routine, him and her.

It’s a silly little routine. He probably doesn’t even think of it as a routine. But Felicity has been sick for so very long and her patience is wearied out. Kardia is such a small town and she does not get nearly enough visitors. Especially not visitors from foreign lands.

She’s read enough books to know something about what the lack of social contact can do to a person. Felicity has little else to do but sit in bed or sit downstairs and read. The illness has weakened her so much now that her head spins when she reads for too long. So instead she stares out the window at the unchanging world and thinks of all the things that she could be doing, if she just wasn’t so ill!

It goes like this. In the early morning on every Sunday, with dawn just beginning to turn the pitch night sky to soft grey, Felicity will be sitting up on the cushioned window-seat in the front living-room downstairs. She cannot sleep much these days; she never exerts enough physical energy to need rest. She wears her dark brown dressing gown, bare feet cold in the room.

He will walk up the lane, colours faded in the weak light and pass by her house on his way to the bench outside the plaza. Ivan the travelling merchant will turn his head, and smile one dazzling, kind smile at the girl in the window. Felicity will smile back. Then he’s gone and she’s left bereft.

It’s silly, to think much of it. When was the last time anyone else smiled at her like that?

Then one day, the routine changes.

Technically, it doesn’t happen during the routine itself in the morning. It’s just after noon, the hottest part of the day and Felicity is lying on the floor of her father’s office with a pillow underneath her head. Her hair spills out over the floor. Godwin is away, talking to Raguna. Her father approves of him. He hasn’t realised how in love Raguna is with the town eccentric.

It’s too humid for her. Her father’s office is the coolest part of the house but still all Felicity can do is lie there and think to herself. She’s actually become quite adept at staring at the ceiling and thinking of nothing at all.

She doesn’t register the sharp knock on the door at first. Then she does and whips up too fast into a sitting position, startled. Her hearts hurts with how it’s racing so fast. (It isn’t her father’s knock.) All she can do is struggle to her feet slowly, hand on chest. She isn’t even strong enough to call out for the person at the door to wait, she’s coming.

Who could it be? Zavier coming by with one of his tales of adventure, slacking on his work? Lukas to make her blush with his lovesick poetry for Rosetta? Melody and Lara are working. Neumann already knows she’s more ill than usual this week. Tori hasn’t been talking to her as much since she became ill. Bianca never lets Tabatha visit anyone during the day.

She doesn’t expect it to be Ivan, the travelling merchant.

She stares up at him. He is taller than she remembers. For all their little routine gives, the last time she spoke words to him was at the winter festival.

“Hello, Felicity,” Ivan greets, eyes crinkling and voice soft. “May I come in?”

“Of course,” she says, still startled, and lets him pass in. Soon they’re sitting in the living room where Godwin receives any guests, facing each other across the coffee table. Felicity’s feet are still bare; she tries to swish the hem of her white dress down to cover them.

“What brings you here?” she asks, after a silence.

Ivan is not one to look embarrassed or undignified. She still senses that he’s making up an excuse under that perfectly calm face when he says, “It actually happens to be my birthday today.”

“Oh! What age?”

He smiles, slightly. “Thirty.”

Felicity blinks. He ages well. She herself is nineteen, turning twenty this year; although her birthday won’t be until the fall. (She does not know if she will make it to thirty.) “Today’s a leap day, isn’t it? February twenty-ninth?”

“You’re correct,” he inclines his head, with more grace than a travelling merchant should really possess. “I suppose one could say this is my seventh and a half birthday.” His mouth quirks up at that, a flash of teeth. Felicity grins back.

“You’re very tall for a seven year old, Mister Ivan.”

“Please, call me Ivan.”

That surprises her. In a good way. “Ivan, then.” Pause. “I am terribly afraid I’ve no present to give you. I didn’t know it was your birthday.”

“I wasn’t expecting you to,” he says mildly. “But I was wondering if I could do something for _you_.”

“Something… for me?” Isn’t it _his_ birthday?

Felicity would ask why he isn’t with his friends or family but Ivan is only here once a week and he _does_ travel. His hometown might be too far to make it in time. Or perhaps he doesn’t even have family…?

“I know this day only comes around every four years,” he says quietly. “Trust me in that I am happier here in Kardia on this day than anywhere else in the world.”

She stares at him for a moment before agreeing, voice warmed, “It _is_ a lovely town.” Her town. Kardia, the only thing she will ever love forever, the only thing that will last longer than herself.

“I was talking to Raguna,” he continues, “and he told me you are quite unfortunately ill.”

Unfortunate is one way to call it. _Cursed_ is another.

“Yes, I am,” she admits, because there’s no way to deny it. “I would advise you not to stray too close – it might be contagious!”

“I doubt that, Felicity.” Ivan’s face is serious. She stares at him.

Then he rises, cloak swishing and crosses the room. He sits down on the couch beside her, it dipping under his weight. He’s warm and close and solid and all Felicity can do is look at him blankly. His eyes are very blue, but there’s tinges of grey too, like a summer sky turning to rain.

“Can I have your hand?” he asks, and holds out his own.

She gives him her hand. He takes it and his hands are warm when they cover her small cold hand.

“Close your eyes.”

She does.

Nothing seems to actually happen. She waits with bated breath and when he tells her she can open her eyes, she does so with a vague sense of disappointment. What was she even expecting to happen?

“Well, Felicity,” Ivan leans back, away from her and letting her hand go. “I think I know what I would like for my birthday.”

Her hearts skips a beat.

“You know Cecilia?” Ivan asks, and Felicity nods her head, disconcerted now. “Did she ever give you a stone of any sort? Just a normal pebble. For good luck, perhaps.”

Felicity blanks, not knowing anything of what he’s saying – and then she remembers. Aha, of course! Cecilia had come up to her – a long time ago, before the illness – when Felicity was dropping by the library to talk to Tori. She’d given her a rock. It really was quite a nice rock.

She had kept in her bedside table drawer, by some quirk of mind. “Do you want it?” she asks, puzzled.

“Rocks are a good gift to give, aren’t they?” He smiles.

She can’t argue with the fact that it is his birthday, and that’s what he wants. She doesn’t mind too terribly with parting from it – it is just a rock, after all. So she tells him to wait a minute and scrambles up from the sofa and slowly makes her way up to her bedroom and down again. She has to stop a few times to lean against the wall. It takes perhaps a bit too long and when she hands out the rock to Ivan, she blushes.

He takes it from her. A wave of disappointment and ache washes over her; and yet still like something heavy had been lifted from her shoulders and neck. Felicity rubs at the skin over her heart and takes a deep breath.

“Thank you very much,” he tells her.

Soon after that he’s gone. Felicity watches him leave from where she stands at the door, bare feet being tickled by the welcome mat. The sunlight glints in his hair all the way down the street until he turns a corner and disappears from sight.

**Author's Note:**

> It's Ivan's birthday! Since he's born on a Leap Year, I have to celebrate it. The next time we all can is in 2020, after all.


End file.
